Obama firefighting before new term

WASHINGTON: It was meant to be a triumphant return to the White House East Room after a spectacular electoral conquest. Instead, President Obama is holding his first full-fledged press conference in seven months at 1.30pm on Wednesday (midnight IST) buffeted by headwinds from a continuing dust-up over financial and budgeting issues with a Republican House which also got re-elected. A farcical scandal involving his top generals has complicated what was expected to be a smooth and victorious transition to a second White House term starting January 20 with a newly constituted cabinet.

Just how messy the turbulent events of the past week have turned for the administration is evident in the exasperated comment by defense secretary Leon Panetta on Monday amid the unraveling scandal involving the generals. "Who the hell knows?" Panetta told journalists accompany him in a military aircraft when asked for a timeline of his departure from the administration, something he has spoken about in the past. The annoyance evidently stemmed from the abrupt and precipitous fall from grace of the storied "soldier-scholar" Gen David Petraeus, Panetta's successor as CIA Director, following extra-marital capers with his biographer.

But a second general mired in the scandal is now getting the benefit of doubt from the Obama administration. White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Tuesday that President Obama continues to have faith in Gen John Allen, the top US commander in Afghanistan, after it emerged that his email exchanges with Florida socialite Jill Kelley — whose complaint to the FBI resulted in the unearthing of Gen Petraeus' affair with biographer Paula Broadwell — was merely flirtatious not amounting to an affair.

Still, Gen Allen's confirmation hearing before the Senate armed services committee for the job as the top Nato commander was deferred pending inquiry into his exchanges with Kelley. Initial reports said his email correspondence with Kelley amounted to 20,000 pages. Clouds also hang over whether Gen Petraeus will testify before Congress over the Benghazi incident in which the US envoy to Libya was killed, particularly after his biographer-paramour told a university audience in Denver that the US consulate many have been attacked because the CIA was holding Libyan prisoners. The CIA has vehemently denied this, but it has brought attention to whether she was privy to classified information.

Attention now centers on how and why two celebrated US generals would get so involved in the untidy life of a socialite who it turns out was a unpaid liaison of the state department to the US military command in Florida and not an employee of Foggy Bottom as initially reported. They extolled the motherly virtues of her twin sister in letters to a judge as she fought a custody battle with an ex-husband even after the judge found her to be "dishonest and lacking integrity." She was also being sued in various quarters over financial matters and was declaring bankruptcy.

The mess involving the generals, particularly the timeline of when the White House and Congress were and ought to have been informed, the negotiations on the fiscal cliff, and the continuing nightmare of many people affected by Hurricane Sandy is expected to dominate the news conference. President Obama has not held a White House press conference since March this year.

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